Originally published in hardcover: New York : St. Martin's Minotaur, c2002.

"In the middle of the night, private investigator Bill Smith is awakened by a call from the NYPD. They're holding a fifteen-year-old kid named Gary - a kid Bill knows. But before he can find out what's going on, Gary escapes Bill's custody and disappears into the dark night and unfamiliar streets. Bill, with the help of his partner, Lydia Chin, tries to find the missing teen and uncover what it is that has led him so far from home. Tracking Gary's family to a small town in New Jersey, Bill finds himself in a community where nothing matters but high school football, and where the secrets of the past - both the town's and Bill's own - threaten to destroy the present. If Bill is to have any chance of saving Gary and preventing a tragedy, he has to both unravel a long-buried crime and confront the darkness of his own past."--BOOK JACKET.